SGER: Deception as a Resource in Design to Support Interpersonal Awareness

无处不在的信息和通信技术（ICT）正在对人们的社交和协作方式产生变革性影响。特别是，“虚拟组织”- -跨越地理和机构界限的个人、设施和资源的集合- -在一系列环境中日益成为一种常见的工作结构。然而，在虚拟组织中工作的人面临的最重要的问题之一是，与同事之间的非正式互动可能很难得到支持。与面对面的合作相比，这意味着意想不到的问题可能需要更长的时间来解决，不确定性和误解可能持续更长时间，关系可能需要更长的时间来发展。支持非正式的互动需要提高人际关系意识，也就是说，能够快速、自然地看到同事在做什么，以及他们是否有空交谈。迄今为止，设计和研究工作通常未能产生新的和广泛采用的技术来克服虚拟组织中与次优人际意识相关的问题。限制该领域进展的一个问题是，许多感知和中断最小化技术中隐含的假设，以减少歧义并提供有关他人的准确信息。然而，越来越多的证据表明，这些假设可能是不成立的。在交流中，人们经常利用某些媒体的模棱两可属性来保持对信息接收的合理否认，避免对抗，以及鼓励或阻止对查询的快速反应。关于意识技术，这种做法有时被认为具有欺骗性，因为可能故意向同事提供关于某人是否有空的虚假信息。这导致了以下研究问题：在当前的信息通信技术下，人们何时以及如何使用欺骗来管理人际意识？这些欺骗对他们的自我概念和与同事合作的能力有什么影响？这一领域的大多数现有工作旨在描述人们使用欺骗的特征，或者通过提供更准确的信息来消除欺骗。另一方面，该项目的长期目标是识别欺骗，并将其作为设计和实施改进的感知技术的资源加以利用。这一SGER为在人际意识中识别和使用欺骗热点的新想法提供了初步的工作，这是一个研究项目的第一个探索性步骤，它可能会显著影响如何考虑和设计人际意识技术，以及我们对欺骗在人际意识中的作用的理解。它的主要贡献是：1)系统地检查了欺骗作为现有意识技术资源使用的条件，以及2)将欺骗概念化，作为技术如何支持人际意识的“麻烦点”的指标。更广泛的影响：该项目的结果对于在我们的国家网络基础设施中提供必要的社会能力至关重要，这将使各种形式的地理分布虚拟组织能够有效和变革性地工作。

Ubiquitous information and communication technologies (ICT) are having transformative effects on the ways in which people socialize and collaborate. In particular, "virtual organizations" - aggregations of individuals, facilities and resources that span geographic and institutional boundaries - are an increasingly common work structure in a range of settings. One of the most important problems faced by those working in virtual organizations, however, is that unscheduled informal interaction with colleagues can be difficult to support. When compared with face-to-face collaborations, this means unanticipated problems can take longer to solve, uncertainties and misunderstandings can persist longer, and relationships may take longer to develop.Supporting informal interactions requires improved interpersonal awareness, that is, the ability to quickly and naturally see what colleagues are doing and whether or not they are available to talk. To date, design and research efforts have generally failed to produce novel and widely adopted technologies that overcome the problems associated with sub-optimal interpersonal awareness in virtual organizations. One problem limiting progress in the area is the implicit assumption in many awareness and interruption minimization technologies to reduce ambiguity and provide accurate information about others. There is increasing evidence, however, to suggest that such assumptions may not be valid. In communication, people frequently draw on the ambiguous properties of certain media to maintain plausible deniability about message receipt, avoid confrontation, as well as to encourage or discourage rapid response to a query. With regard to awareness technologies, such practices can sometimes be considered deceptive in that false information about one's availability may be deliberately provided to colleagues. This leads to the following research questions: When and how do people use deception to manage interpersonal awareness with current ICTs? What is the impact of these deceptions on their self-concept and their ability to work with colleagues?Most existing work in this area aims to either characterize people's use of deception, or eliminate deception by providing more accurate information. The long-term goal of this project, on the other hand, is to identify deception and to exploit it as a resource in designing and implementing improved awareness technologies. This SGER enables preliminary work on novel ideas about the identification and usage of deception hotspots in interpersonal awareness is the first exploratory step of a research program that could significantly impact how interpersonal awareness technologies are considered and designed, as well as our understanding of the role of deception in interpersonal awareness. Its primary contributions are: 1) a systematic examination of the conditions under which deception is used as a resource with existing awareness technologies, and 2) a conceptualization of deceptions as an indicator of a "trouble spot" in how a technology is supporting interpersonal awareness. Broader Impact: The results of this project will be critical to providing the necessary social capacities in our national cyberinfrastructure that will enable effective and transformative work in various forms of geographically distributed virtual organizations.